Differences Around the Council Table Around Spending
Cut back the rates or get on with business? Invercargill City councillors continued to debate what the community could afford in this ever changing financial environment yesterday.
Council initially proposed a 7.7% rates increase in its annual plan, but following many complaints and concerns from submitters trimmed it back to 7.15%, and now it sits at 6.53%.
Deputy Mayor Nobby Clark is still gunning for just 4% saying that it was “reflective of the pain that has been suffered in the community around food, fuel, power and rent.”
He suggested halting work on the civic administration building until they knew what the future of local government would be, saying spending $600,000 was “reckless.”
He also suggested delaying the Three Waters project, but this was met with a very lukewarm response around the room.
The third suggestion was to pull back on stage two of the streetscapes project, and councillor Ian Pottinger agreed, saying “in this financial landscape $14 million is too much. We should park it and move on.”
Strongly in opposition to any suggestion of cutting back spending was councillor Nigel Skelt who said he was somewhat perplexed with the content of the discussion.
“What this community wants, is us to get on and actually finish the projects we have on hand in a reasonable timeframe and at a reasonable price.”
Further delays would just escalate the costs of projects and he urged councillors to just get on with it and get things done.
What councillors did agree on was a $165,000 reduction of the council’s staffing budget, which could be achieved through management of the recruitment of current vacancies.
A reduction of the $250,000 budget to $50,000 for city centre activation was another cost saving.
Council will have its last chance to make changes before they are finalised on June 28th.
Watch the meeting here:
Related:
Deputy Mayor Nobby Clark Confirmed He Is Standing For Invercargill Mayor